New Conflict Dashboard Tracks Emerging Conflict Trends

The Strauss Center's Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program released the new CCAPS conflict dashboard today, enabling analysts to assess high-level conflict trends and detailed event data simultaneously.

Bringing together mapping, trends analysis, and raw data, the CCAPS conflict dashboard provides a comprehensive view of emerging and historical conflict trends in Africa. Users can also analyze how these trends relate to a range of socioeconomic factors.

"Complex security dynamics in Africa naturally require in-depth research and analysis, but also new ways of sharing data to be of most use in policy planning," said Strauss Center Director Francis J. Gavin. "The CCAPS conflict dashboard leverages innovative new CCAPS research to do just this."

The dashboard includes two leading-edge conflict datasets from the CCAPS program. The Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) provides the first systematic tracking of a broad range of social and political unrest in Africa, including protests, riots, strikes, inter-communal conflict, government violence against civilians, and other forms of social conflict. The dashboard maps over 7,900 social conflict events from 1990 to 2011 and provides detailed information on the location, timing and magnitude of conflict events, as well as the actors and issues involved.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) provides near real-time tracking of armed conflict in Africa, with data updated monthly. ACLED tracks the actions of opposition groups, governments, and militias in Africa, specifying the exact location and date of battle events, transfers of military control, headquarter establishment, civilian violence, and rioting. The conflict dashboard displays over 60,000 armed conflict events from 1997 to 2013.

"The conflict dashboard is a key part of our effort to produce new research that could support policy planning and the work of practitioners and governments in Africa," said CCAPS Program Manager Ashley Moran. "The dashboard puts volumes of historical and real-time data in the hands of the people who need it. Policy makers, citizens, aid workers, journalists, and researchers alike can analyze how emerging conflict patterns could impact their communities of interest."

CCAPS partnered with Development Gateway to launch its integrated mapping platform last year to analyze how climate, conflict, and aid intersect. CCAPS and Development Gateway have since produced data dashboards to provide in-depth examination of several thematic areas under study. This latest conflict dashboard follows the release of the CCAPS aid dashboard last fall, which combines trends analysis with the most comprehensive collection of geocoded data on aid projects in Africa. CCAPS will release additional dashboards on climate and governance in 2013.

For more information, contact Ashley Moran at amoran@austin.utexas.edu or 512-439-9460.

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